The Warlords 2007 123movies

Watch: 投名狀 2007 123movies, Full Movie Online – Set in China in the 1860’s during the Taiping Rebellion, the story is based on the assassination of Ma Xinyi in 1870. Loyalist General Qingyun is the only survivor of a battle with anti-Qing rebels. He encounters a starving village, whose inhabitants engage in banditry to survive, where he is nursed back to health by the attractive Liansheng. With his strength regained, Qingyun impresses one of the village bandit leaders, Jiang Wuyang, with his fighting skills. Wuyang introduces him to his “big brother”, who also happens to be Liansheng’s husband, Zhao Erhu and Qingyun begins to assist them with their raids. Qingyun convinces his two new comrades to form a loyalist army unit to fight the rebels and feed their own people. The three men swear a blood oath. Their stunning military successes impress the governing powers, but as Qingyun’s influence begins to grow, they soon fear him. The political and emotional stakes will be tested, leading to differences between the blood brothers..
Plot: A heroic tale of three blood brothers and their struggle in the midst of war and political upheaval. It is based on “The Assassination of Ma,” a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) story about the killing of general Ma Xinyi.
Smart Tags: #blood_brothers #betrayal #19th_century #qing_dynasty #historical_event #taiping_rebellion #chinese_history #forbidden_city #timeframe_1860s #timeframe_1870s #timeframe_19th_century #general #assassination #death_of_protagonist #kung_fu #1870s #love_triangle #army_general #reinforcement_fighters #beheading #canon

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Ratings:

	7.0/10 Votes: 27,043
	62% | RottenTomatoes
	70/100 | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 249 Popularity: 15.995 | TMDB

Reviews:

Not bad, actually, not bad…
..for a movie that’s a bit difficult for Western audiences to enjoy. I mean, let’s face it, we’re not exactly suckers for blood oaths as the main plot device, which is the case here, and the story may feel hard to follow at times.

Two things made be enjoy this one. For one thing, the Chinese did a pretty good job as far as giving the movie the proper epic side it needed. There’s only a fine line between epic cinematography and drollery and these guys managed not to cross it, unlike, say, Gladiator or ‘300’.

Then, there’s the acting. Having only seen Jet Li in Hollywood movies before I thought he was something of a Jackie Chan without the funny face. I stand corrected, he gives a great performance in Tau Ming Chong, he is truly believable as his character, general Pang, gradually turns into a ruthless backstabbing freak for power. Finally, kudos to the actor playing Er Hu, Andy Lau. I hope I’ll get to see more of him.

Having seen the abominable blockbuster that ‘The Last Samurai’ really is the other night, it definitely enhanced my appreciation for this title.

“The Warlords”– a cure for that millenia-old curse called “the Spirit of Sparta”
I want to start this review with a warning because, like the other 2007 Chinese movie “Lust Caution” with a similarly “monochromatic/ realistic” palette, the marketing of this movie is basically an attempt to entice people who might be uninterested in the actual themes of the movie– the truth is, “Warlords” can only be considered a “heroic war epic” if “Lust Caution” can be considered a “sexy spy thriller”. In other words, nasty war sequences (like the nasty sex scenes in “Lust Caution”) were filmed to show the “why’s”, not the “how’s”. In fact, after a small-scaled (only a few thousand men involved) but “FULL-ON” (Infantry + Archers + Musketeers + Artillery + Cavalry + Jet Li) battle set-piece in the first half of the movie– which actually left some members of the audience physically shaking– it became very obvious that the movie/ director (much like “Lust Caution”) has very little interest in depicting the actual events of the war.

Only the opening titles will tell you that this war, specifically the Taiping rebellion of 1850s-60s, resulted in the loss of 70 million lives– so people thinking to satisfy their blood-lust with this movie should be forewarned that after all the characters and premises have been introduced, the remaining years of fighting are only “depicted” through various montages and cinematic/ plot devices. In fact, I find this movie more a connected series of stark war stories/ vignettes about coal mining villages, boy soldiers, etc. than anything else. In short, anyone coming in clueless about that part of Chinese history is unlikely to learn much by watching this movie– the British and the French, etc. were encroaching, the Hui Muslims and Shandong rogue armies, etc. were rebelling, Empress Dowager Cixi was power-grabbing, and everyone was making “deals”… no 2-hour movie will show you all that.

But there are still some problems with this movie, which made me take away a few points. Being an Asian movie, weaknesses in effects and production values still show up here and there (some “dubious” CGI and such). And being a Hong Kong-styled commercial release, the need/ decision to cut its running time down to 2 hours made it feel “over-edited” to me. E.g. By cutting out all the love/ sex scenes, I “knew” about the romantic relationships, but didn’t really understand it (a bad case of “tell but don’t show”); and during lengthier shots and scenes, the director/ editor kept cutting back and forth as if he didn’t trust the strength of the actors or the script to hold up the tension. But enough with the reservations– let’s get on to the good stuff.

1) CINEMATOGRAPHY. Most films are color-corrected to bring out their colors and contrasts, with sci-fi/ fantasy/ effects movies (and cinematographer-turned-directors like Zhang Yimou) being the most notorious for doing this. But this film was color-corrected to “drain out” the colors so that it looked like some historical film footage from the 1860s, if such a thing were possible. And when some colors do appear, they only gave the film a fable-like mood of a legend being re-told. This heightened sense of “(sur-)realism” set by the cinematography was so powerful that there were only sobs or silence from the audience for the length of 2 hours.

2) ACTION CHOREOGRAPHY. Hong Kong action directors/ choreographers must be pure magic– because they can still create hair-raising action sequences when thrown into the lot with clueless first-time action directors like Peter Chan (with Ching Siu-Tung in this movie), Ang Lee (with Yuen Woo-Ping in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), etc.. The 4 short action sequences (2 battles, 2 fights) and various “bit-fighting” in this film are swift, precise and brutal– nothing to drool at in the way of wuxia or comic-book violence, but with enough “in-your-face” realism to put this movie above the equivalent of any PG-rating in most film markets. And Jet Li, without displaying any martial arts “forms”, was simply riveting to watch.

3) SOCIAL COMMENTARY. The “commentary” is at once blatant and subtle– and this is the reason (over and above the action sequences) for the positive reviews and word-of-mouth coming from viewers who “get it”. It is blatantly clear that all sympathies lie with the “little guys” or “underdogs”– and yet everything remains quite subtle because none of the characters sees enough of the “big picture” to sell the audience any underlying messages. By setting the story in the twilight years of the Taiping rebellion (the film ends in 1870), it easily makes the point– without anyone actually having to say so– that the government wasn’t eager to end a conflict which yielded political/ economic profit. The movie was just brimming with ideas.

4) SIEGE OF SUZHOU. This siege, which started off the 2nd half of the movie, was where opinions really divided between the die-hard war/ history fans and more regular movie audiences– because the director’s true vision started coming through with a quiet but almost complete turnabout in pace/ genre. In a film filled with arresting/ disturbing images, the highly “romanticized” (and near-“mythical”) introduction of a remaining rebel leader pushes the characters’ personal dilemmas to an almost “ethical/ spiritual” level (the founder of the Taiping rebellion claimed to be the “Brother of Christ” and named his regime the “Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping”). It might make or break the rest of the movie for some viewers.

I could go on about the rows of rice offerings or shoes with wooden name-tags, etc., but would rather keep this review relatively spoiler-free. However, something should be said about the “historical accuracy” of this movie– there is none, because all the names and events have been “changed”. E.g. Jet Li’s character is now named Pang Qing-yun, which (in Chinese, literally “clouds in the sky”) reflects his ambitions, etc.. So apart from the general historical context/ outline, all events and characters portrayed in the movie are fictional….

Other Information:

Original Language zh
Runtime 2 hr 6 min (126 min), 1 hr 53 min (113 min) (international)
Budget 40000000
Revenue 0
Status Released
Rated R
Genre Action, Adventure, Drama
Director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Wai-Man Yip
Writer Tin-Nam Chun, Junli Guo, Jiping He
Actors Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro
Country Hong Kong, China
Awards 18 wins & 28 nominations
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Dolby Digital, DTS (5.1)
Aspect Ratio 2.35 : 1
Camera Arriflex 235, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses, Arriflex 435 Advanced, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses, Arriflex 535B, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses, Panavision Panaflex Cameras, Panavision Primo Lenses
Laboratory Kantana, Bangkok, Thailand (prints), Kodak Cinelabs, Beijing, China (dailies)
Film Length 3,450 m (Portugal, 35 mm)
Negative Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, Vision3 500T 5219)
Cinematographic Process Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format), Super 35 (source format)
Printed Film Format 35 mm (anamorphic)